


mirror in the sky

by acezukos (purplefennels7)



Series: abby does fleet week 2k20 [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s03e10-11 The Day of Black Sun, Love Confessions, M/M, the inherent trauma of living through a war part 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25598302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplefennels7/pseuds/acezukos
Summary: Bato and Hakoda, the night before the eclipse, sit by the fire and talk about responsibility, and what they've left behind, and maybe something a little like love.
Relationships: Bato/Hakoda (Avatar)
Series: abby does fleet week 2k20 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1851535
Comments: 23
Kudos: 96
Collections: Bakoda Fleet Week 2020





	mirror in the sky

**Author's Note:**

> melancholy writing again? it's more likely than you think! wanted to take on a little bit of what bato might be thinking before the invasion (it turned into hakoda angsting again halfway through but what can u do). 
> 
> title from "landslide" by fleetwood mac - please listen for vibes.

Long after the rest of the camp should’ve been asleep, Bato sits up over the last embers of the fire, elbows balanced on his knees and staring into the coals like they might allow him to see the Spirit World. The rest of the warriors had disappeared into their tents hours ago, Hakoda lingering until the last of them were bedded down and prodding Bato to do the same. Eventually, though, he too had bid him a reluctant good night.  _ We need you well-rested for the invasion, _ he’d said, levelling one finger at him from between his half-shut tent flaps and instructing him to sleep or else.

To be fair, he had tried; had banked the fire, as was the responsibility of the last person to go to bed, and crawled into his tent and stared up at the canvas for an indeterminate amount of time, listening to a lone badgerfrog croaking in the woods past the campsite and not feeling tired in the least. The specter of the next morning’s invasion had felt almost physically present, hovering over him in the darkness of the tent and jolting him back to awareness every time he’d thought he was finally falling asleep. As he runs through scenario after scenario in his head, directing the men through different combinations of imaginary obstacles in lieu of the fact that none of them know, truly, what they’re going to be facing once the submarines dock in the Fire Nation, he wonders whether Hakoda in the tent next to his is suffering from the same insomnia. 

Probably not. When they were kids, Hakoda was always falling asleep in the strangest places - curled up against a coil of rope on the deck of a ship that didn’t even belong to him, leaning back against a snowbank, in the bottom of a canoe - and his ability to sleep on any even vaguely horizontal surface had followed him into adulthood.

When Bato finally gives up and throws his parka and shoes back on, trying to keep his footsteps light and quiet as he picks his way over to the remains of the fire and added a few handfuls of sticks, blowing on them gently to ignite the coals, he tells himself he’s just playing lookout. They might be in ‘friendly territory,’ but then again, in an international war, is any territory truly friendly?

And that was the crux of it, isn’t it? They’ve all left their lives behind, left the village, spent years at sea fighting battles in a war they couldn’t hope to win, and even for decades before that, the war had brought itself to their shores, uninvited and unannounced except by the slow puff of black carbon on the horizon. Bato and Hakoda and the rest of the men had at least gotten a few precious years of, well, not peace, but quiet, without the fear of the next raid just hovering over the curve of the world, ready to drag more of the waterbenders away. Their children had never known that, and they may never know it at all. Not unless they can give it to them.

He’s rubbing idly at his scarred arm, ducking away from the smoke rising from the fire as the wind blows it in his direction, when he hears a noise from the far side of camp. 

“Who’s there?” he says lowly, bracing to wake the rest of the warriors if it’s an intruder. There’s another rustle, the crunching sound of a boot against the coarse gravel of the beachside camp, and then Hakoda appears from around one of the rows of tents. 

“Bato,” he says as he comes closer. “What are you doing up, didn’t I tell you to go to bed? We sail at dawn.” 

“I tried that already. I couldn’t get my brain to shut off. Anyway, I should be asking you the same thing,” Bato replies. A scatter of sparks mark where one of the mostly-burnt logs has collapsed lower into the embers, and Hakoda steps out of the way before sitting down next to him, their sides within a hands breadth of touching. “You need to be rested, too.” Hakoda doesn’t reply, picking up a stick and stirring the coals, sending a puff of smoke swirling out and up into the night sky. Bato leans over and tosses a few more branches into the pit.

“Same problem,” Hakoda says finally, avoiding Bato’s eyes. “Couldn’t stop thinking.”

“About what?” Bato prompts. Hakoda sighs, letting his shoulders drop - the last of the veneer of the chief that he’s kept up all this time sliding away and leaving behind just Hakoda, Bato’s best friend since, well, since forever, the man Bato’s been at least a little in love with since he was sixteen and barely understood what love was. He’s the only one, has always been the only one, allowed to see him like this.

“What would you say to someone? If you knew you were seeing them for the last time?” Bato inhales sharply, and the wind turns, whisking the rising smoke into his face. He splutters, trying to stifle a cough.

“Koda, what is this? What are you-”

“Humour me.” Bato shuts his watering eyes, throat burning from more than just the faceful of smoke. 

“Not someone.” He pauses, turning to look at Hakoda, illuminated in profile by the dim light of the flames, knife-sharp cheekbones casting dramatic shadows across his face. “You. And I’d tell you. I’d tell you the truth.”

“What is the truth, Bato?” Hakoda asks, low and urgent but tentative all at once. “What would you tell me?”

“I love you,” Bato says, on an exhale. Even as his stomach drops he feels light, like he could lift off the ground and dance with the lightning-bugs circling the fire. He’s been carrying this weight for far too long. “I’ve loved you since we were sixteen. I’ve spent nearly my entire life loving you.”

Hakoda lets out a wounded noise, like Bato’s hit him, and just when Bato is starting to worry, he curls in until his head is practically on Bato’s chest. 

“Now, of all times?” Tentatively, Bato raises his scarred arm and wraps it around Hakoda’s back. “I suppose I did ask for it.”

“You wanted the truth,” Bato says, with a little more levity than he feels. He sobers quickly, though. “We’ll lose men tomorrow, Hakoda. None of us are safe.”

“Don’t.” Hakoda’s voice sounds wrecked. “Don’t remind me.”

“It’s war,” Bato says, infinitely soft. He’s known Hakoda all his life, and he knows exactly what he’s thinking. That it’s his responsibility to protect everyone, even when he can’t. “Do you think I don’t feel guilty, too? I’m your second in command. Every death under your command is also under mine, and I’ve been lying awake this whole time thinking about it. How I might’ve done better.”

“It’s not all on you,” Hakoda protests immediately. “We make plans together.” Bato smiles wryly at him, and waits to see his eyes widen, visible as dark shimmers of blue in the firelight.

“Oh, you think you’re so clever. Alright, fine.” He flicks gently at Bato’s fingers where they rest over his bicep, and the melancholy mood is broken, if only for a second. 

“I can’t save everyone,” Bato says eventually. “And neither can you. We make those calls together, and we take the consequences together.”

“And the one time we didn’t, I couldn’t save you,” Hakoda mumbles, reaching out to trace a finger down Bato’s scarred arm. “Or Katara and Sokka, for that matter, not from this war. It’s been years, Bato. Years since I’ve seen my own children, and now they’re travelling with the Avatar, and I’ve missed so much.” Bato stays quiet, letting Hakoda speak in his own time. He’d noticed the guilt sitting heavy in the lines of his face, tightening every time he’d looked over at one of the kids when they’d been planning for the invasion, but Hakoda had had to be  _ Chief _ then, larger than life, a figurehead instead of a man. There was no room then, in front of the warriors, for weakness. “Katara’s a master now, and Sokka is too, and they aren’t just kids anymore and I am so, so proud of them but I wasn’t there for any of it.”  _ They shouldn’t have had to do so much so soon, so young, _ goes unsaid. 

“But you  _ were,” _ Bato says. They’re practically clinging to each other now, one blob of shadow in front of the fire. “You still carry Kya with you, don’t you? Even though she is gone.”

“Every day,” Hakoda affirms, hushed.

“And so Sokka and Katara carry you.” He pauses infinitesimally, then forges on. “So I carry you.”

“I do,” Hakoda says, somewhat nonsensically. Pauses, and moves so he can look Bato in the eyes. “I do love you. I think I just never realized.” Bato physically feels the last of the tension leave him. Even though he’d guessed, somewhat, in the years they’d been away, that Hakoda’s feelings were starting to change, he’d long ago resigned himself to always loving Hakoda more than Hakoda loved him. It’s cruel, maybe, that they’re doing this now, when they may not live to the next sunrise, but maybe this is the only time for it. The last baring of the heart while they can still be just themselves, just Hakoda and Bato, not the Chief and his right hand man.

“War makes corpses of us all,” Bato says, letting himself lean against Hakoda and feeling him lean back in return. “We must fight, Koda. We must fight to live, and to love. That’s what’ll get us through this.” Hakoda leans up and presses a dry kiss to Bato’s cheek. He smells like woodsmoke and home, even here on this beach on the outskirts of the Earth Kingdom where smoke is war machines and gouts of firebending and death instead of bonfires and dancing and memory. 

“When did you become so wise?” 

“I always have been. You were just too busy to notice.” Hakoda untangles one arm to poke him in the ribs, but instead of poking him back like he usually would, Bato takes a chance. He’s allowed to do this now, he thinks, and leans in. He cups Hakoda’s cheek with one hand and leans down to kiss him, slow and sweet, and with only the stars as witness, Hakoda kisses back. 

There, locked together with the firelight casting long shadows over their faces, Bato feels purely, singularly content. For just a moment, there is no war. There is no invasion, no scythe of death hanging above their heads. It’s only them, and the lightning bugs, and the waves lapping against the shore, and he thinks  _ damn the future, damn it all,  _ because they have each other now, and Tui and La, they are in love.

**Author's Note:**

> written for day 3 of [bakoda fleet week](https://bakodafleetweek.tumblr.com) for the _smoke_ prompt. and it could serve for interrupted too, as a metaphor i guess. comments/kudos treasured <3
> 
> credit for the line "war makes corpses of us all" to jrr tolkien. the "when did you become so wise" exchange inspired loosely by greta gerwig's little women.
> 
> on [tumblr](https://acezukos.tumblr.com)


End file.
